Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/133

120 ology is called "sacred," not because true, and so far as true—for then the truths which Thales, or which Plato, taught were also "sacred" and "divine;" but as miraculous in its origin, coming from a source which is outside of human consciousness, and above all the doubts of men. In virtue of this miraculous revelation, the meanest priest ever let loose from Rome, or the smallest possible minister ever brooded into motion at Oberlin or Princeton, is supposed to know more about God, man, and the relation between them, than Socrates and all the "uninspired" philosophers, from Aristotle of Stagyra down to Baur of Tubingen, could ever find out with all the thinking of their mighty heads. Now in theology the teacher must show that there is no philosophic or historical foundation for this vast fiction, it is "such stuff as dreams are made of;" there is no supernatural, miraculous, or infallible revelation; the Roman Church has none such, the Protestant none; it is not in the Bible, but the universe is the only Scripture of God—material nature its Old Testament, human nature the New, and in both fresh leaves get written over every day. He must show that inspiration comes not super-naturally and exceptionally, by the miraculous act of God, but naturally and instantially, by the normal act of man, and is proportionate to the individual's powers and use thereof; that the test of inspiration is in the doctrine, not outside thereof; its truth the only proof that what man thinks is also thought by God ; that all truth is equally His word, and they who discover it are alike inspired—whether truth pertaining to astronomy or religion; that the highest authority for any doctrine is its agreement with fact—facts of observation, or of intuitive or demonstrative consciousness. Surely no man, no sect, no book, nor oracle is master to a single soul, for each man is born a new Adam— In this resistance to the pretended authority of an alleged miraculous revelation, there is much to do. The teacher must preach the disadvantages of such a revelation, as Luther preached against the "infallible" Pope